The SRL Mystery Game Tournament is an event in which players will participate in a series of matches,
racing against a single opponent per round in short to medium length goals. These goals will be for games
that are not revealed until moments before the race actually begins, with just enough time to download
the game.

Players are likely to encounter games they've never played before,
seen before, or, most frequently, have never even heard of. This event is designed to determine not just who has
the most gaming experience but the best overall racing abilities!

For any questions and discussion visit us on Discord or #mystery of the SpeedRunsLive IRC.
If you want to be automatically notified of future mystery tournaments or other events, you can subscribe to our mailing list.

Mystery Tournament 13 (Q3 2018)

Contribute a minimum of 2 games according to our submission rules. There is no upper limit, more submissions are always welcome to help ensure a big variety in games.
Game submission form

Download the emulator bundle from the resources section and test controls and functionality of all
emulators prior to the beginning of the tournament. If you encounter any issues, alternative emulators may be used, although
they must not be banned on SpeedRunsLive.

The tournament will last several weeks. Round-based deadlines aside, your matches are whenever you and your opponent
want them to be. Even if you have a tight schedule, you'll still be able to make it work.

Important dates:

The registration / submission deadline is Friday, Aug. 31st.

The tournament begins on Friday, Sept. 7th.

Once finalized, the tournament schedule will be shown on the round labels in the brackets. This includes deadlines for each round.

Additionally to being in #mystery on the SpeedRunsLive irc server whenever possible, you can also follow @SRLMystery on Twitter,
or join the Mystery Discord server for additional
sources of updates pertaining to the tournament.

Mystery Tourney cliff notes

The tournament structure is double elimination.

The tournament will last several weeks. Round-based deadlines aside, your matches are whenever you and opponent want them to be. Even if you have a tight schedule, you'll still be able to make it work.

You will play other players' game submissions in your matches. Similarly, your submission(s) (if any) will be played by other players.

Each match will generally take between 20 and 45 minutes to complete. This time range is not a guarantee, however; matches have taken twice this length on rare occasions.

Brackets will be finalized soon after registration closes. Following this, a spreadsheet full of all players' provided contact information will be made public. You can use this to contact your opponents and schedule your matches as desired.

The tournament schedule will be shown on the round labels in the brackets. This includes deadlines for each round.

All matches will take place on the SpeedRunsLive IRC server and must be streamed to Twitch. Locally recording is also encouraged to prevent any unforeseen technical complications.

Opponents' streams must not be viewed while doing your match.

Outside assistance must not be given; therefore, we encourage players to not read their chat during their matches.

You can view tournament rules and further details by clicking the appropriate links on the left side of this page.

Many matches will be restreamed to the Mystery Fun House Twitch channel, however you have the option to avoid this by informing the tournament organizers and restreamers.

The top 8 will occur across a full weekend (the date will not be finalized until registration is closed).

MT11 is now LIVE!

Mystery Tournament #11 is now officially underway, so go visit #mystery to get your matches in!
Also note, that everyone is encouraged everyone to join all the matches of the other participants as well.
Here are the results of the contact form to help you find your
opponent:
Contact sheet

Good luck & have fun - August 25th, 2017

MTX is now LIVE!

The 10th edition of our Mystery Tournament is now officially underway! Come visit #mystery to get your matches in or join any of the races of the other participants.
Here are the results of the contact form to help you find your
opponent:
Contact sheet

Good luck & have fun - February 17th, 2017

MTX reminders!

Registration for MTX ends at 11:59pm EST on Tuesday, February 7th. Remember that in order to be able to participate,
you are required to fill out the registration form and submit at least two games to the tournament through the game submission form.
If you were one of the first 256 entrants to register or close to the front of
the player queue,
however, you should be all set to participate. As it currently stands, with the total number of submissions we have,
very few players in the queue will be able to participate if they don't submit their own games, so don't count on participating otherwise!

The final bracket and tournament schedule will likely be finalized on Sunday, February 12. The tournament itself will begin on Friday, February 17.
We encourage trying to schedule your match with your opponent before the tournament begins. Additionally, as all tournament activity will take
place on the SpeedRunsLive IRC server, we ask everyone to become acquainted with using IRC as soon as possible. Details for this can be viewed
on the "Resources" page. Lastly, please download the emulator bundle on the "Resources" page and set everything up beforehand.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask us in the #mystery channel on IRC or on our Discord server. Good luck and we'll see you all on the 17th!

February 3rd, 2017

MT9 is now LIVE!

Mystery Tournament #9 is now officially underway, so go visit #mystery to get your matches in!
Also note, that everyone is encouraged everyone to join all the matches of the other participants as well.
Here are the results of the contact form to help you find your
opponent:
Contact sheet

Good luck & have fun - August 19th, 2016

Mystery Tournament #9 registration is now open!

SGDQ is over and it is time again for our Mystery Tournament on SpeedRunsLive!

If you are new to our tournaments make sure to read all information provided in our site's
sidebar. The registration period will last until August 13th. As usual, you also need to submit 1-5 games,
as well as fill out the contact form until this date.

Tournament start is planned for August 19th, the exact schedule will be provided in the coming weeks. The deadlines for each round will be displayed
within the brackets, so you will always know when your matches are due.

Visit us in #mystery on the SpeedRunsLive IRC to ask any questions or to just say hello!

Your #mystery Team, July 15th 2016

Congratulations AND4H!

Congratulations to MT7 winner AND4H for defending his title and becoming the first player to win consecutive mystery tournaments!
This time around he managed to take down Capndrake, another 2 time mystery winner, in the grand finale.
Honorable mentions going out to our 3rd and 4th place finishers Ramsus88 and Nightmare47.
In case you missed the finals, make sure check out the
stream or head
over to the bracket for the full results.

We thank all of our participants for playing and submitting games, making this tournament a joy for everyone involved.
We hope to see you all again for our next tournament later this year, after SGDQ!

Your #mystery Team, March 27th 2016

MT8 is now LIVE!

You all know what this means,
join us in #mystery to find your opponent and get your matches in!
All deadlines have been added to the round labels on the bracket.
As usual, we also encourage everyone to join all the matches of the other participants.
Here are the results of the contact form to help you find your
opponent:
Contact sheet

Good luck & have fun - February 19th, 2016

Mystery Tournament #8 registration is now open!

Registration for the 8th installment of the SpeedRunsLive Mystery Tournament has now officially started!
As usual, if you are new to our tournaments, it is crucial that you read all information provided in our site's
sidebar. If you are a returning player, note that the amount of mandatory game submissions has been reduced to
1 game, all other rules will stay in place from the last tournament.

The registration period will last until February 13th. You also need to submit your required games
and fill out our usual contact form until this date.

The current brackets shown are just a preview and will be shuffled before the tournament begins.
Tournament start is planned for February 19th, the exact schedule will be provided in the coming weeks. The deadlines for each round will be displayed
within the brackets, so you will always know when your matches are due.

January 15th, 2016

Congratulations AND4H!

After finishing 3rd in MT5 and 2nd in MT6, AND4H finally comes out on top to claim the mystery throne for himself!
In our final set of matches he managed to prevail against our runner-up Ramsus88 and the third place finisher Mr_Weables.
In case you missed the finals, make sure check out the
stream or head
over to the bracket for the full results.

As usual, a big thank you goes out to all our participants and their awesome game submissions. See you all again for our next tournament in the new year!

Your #mystery Team, October 11th 2015

MT7 is now LIVE!

Mystery Tournament #7 is now officially underway, so go visit #mystery to get your matches in!
As usual, we encourage everyone to join all the matches of the other participants as well.
Here are the results of the contact form to help you find your
opponent:
Contact sheet

Registration for Mystery Tournament #7 is LIVE!

As usual, you will also have to fill out our contact form to be able to participate:
Contact Form

Registration closes on Saturday, August 29th. Sign up and work on your game submissions now before you forget!
The tournament will start on Friday, September 4th.

August 7th 2015

Mystery Tournament #7 registration will start Friday, August 7th!

Now that SGDQ is over, it is time again for our Mystery Tournament on SpeedRunsLive!

To allow newcomers and people who have a
hard time coming up with their own submissions an easier entry, we decided to reduce the mandatory amount of game submissions to 2, and allow up to a
maximum of 5 submissions. This means that if you are a mystery veteran or just have a lot of game ideas, help us out to make sure we will have
enough games by submitting more than just the bare minimum amount! Apart from this change, all our rules from MT6 will stay the same for this tournament.

This time around you can already submit your games before the signup period officially starts, to allow our game
testers to have some more time to get through all the submissions: Game submissions

Once registration starts, there will be an update with links to the challonge page and as usual, the availability form.
A schedule with deadlines for each round will be provided within the weeks after registration starts.

As usual, don't hesitate to visit us in #mystery on the SpeedRunsLive IRC to ask any questions or to just say hello!

Your #mystery Team, August 2nd 2015

Congratulations Capndrake!

37 days after our opening match, MT4 champion Capndrake manages to take the win over AND4H and
is crowned mystery tournament champion once again!
This time around we mowed through 265 submissions from 13 different systems to complete the tournament. Head over to the
bracket to view the final results.

Thanks to all participants for making the tourney as fun as ever, and we hope to see you all again later this year for MT7!

Your #mystery Team, April 12th 2015

MT6 is now LIVE!

After the opening match last night on the Final Split,
Mystery Tournament #6 is now officially underway.
Go visit #mystery to get your matches in or join all the other races! For anyone not able to participate in races
themselves, we also plan to stream a few matches with commentary every saturday on the
SRL twitch channel.

Here are the results of the availability form to help you contact your
opponent:
Availability list

Good luck & have fun - March 6th, 2015

Mystery Tournament #6 Update

We know that a lot of people are eagerly awaiting the beginning of MT6, but unfortunately we have to
push the tournament start back by 1 week. Of course this also means, that you will have an additional
week for your game submissions.

Accordingly, the new dates to remember are:

February 27th: Registration and submission deadline

March 6th: Tournament start

February 13th, 2015

Mystery Tournament #6 Updates and Reminders

Once again, our registration period is coming to a close. There are about 2 more weeks left to sign up,
if you still want to join our current field of 123 entrants!

The deadline for registration and game submissions is at 11:59pm EST on Friday, February 20th.
If you don't register on our Challonge page,
fill out the
availability form and submit your 3-4 required games by this time, you will
not be able to participate! Additionally, our tournament's
game testers would greatly appreciate not having a flood of 100+ submissions pouring in on the last day.

The tournament schedule will shortly be provided on our website's
Schedule tab.
Important dates to remember are:

February 20th: Registration and submission deadline

February 27th: Tournament start

April 4th: Top 8 stream (tentative)

As always, please join us in #mystery on the SpeedRunsLive IRC when you can, as you will need to be in this channel
often throughout the tournament. If you have any questions pertaining to game submissions, deadlines, the tournament
itself, or whatever else, we'll be happy to clear things up there. We hope to see you around!

February 7th, 2015

Mystery Tournament #6 registration has now started!

Registration for the sixth SpeedRunsLive mystery tournament is now officially open! After a a massive
138 entrants in the fifth installment of our mystery tournament, we are aiming to gather even more
entrants this time around. Before joining, it is crucial that you read all information provided in our site's
sidebar, especially if you are new to our tournaments and don't want to miss out on all the fun. If you're
familiar with our rules, however, you can get a quick update on all of our new rules and features by reading
the following post. Although you will have until late February to sign up, submit your required games, and
fill out a brief availability form, we strongly encourage you to start thinking about your submissions as soon as possible.

The current brackets shown are just a preview and will be shuffled before the tournament begins.
A schedule will also be provided in the coming weeks; the deadlines for each round will be displayed
within the brackets, so you will always know when your matches are due.

January 16th, 2015

What's New?

Listed below are all features and rules new to MT6. All of you mystery veterans should be
fully prepared to submit your games and participate after only reading this post!

PlayStation Games:
PS1 games under 250MB in size can now be submitted! Please use
the PS1 emulator provided on the site to test any PS1 games you may submit.

Highlight Submissions
Each participant can designate their favorite submission while
submitting their games. To ensure that every player gets a game drawn, this submission
is guaranteed to be used at some point in the tournament.

Required Pastebins
Each submission is required to have some information specified,
including the goal's starting point, ending point, continue system, and change in settings (if applicable).

Estimated Goal Times
For the benefit of our testers, you will be required to provide the
time it took for you to complete your goals. If you did not time your goal, submitting an approximated time is acceptable.

CoolROM Banned
CoolROM cannot be used as a download link for roms while submitting your games.

Emulator Bundle
A bundle of tester-approved emulators is provided on the "Resources" page. We
highly encourage using these emulators while testing your submissions and playing in the tournament
to help avoid potential technical difficulties.

Redrawing System
Due to how it is impossibly fair to moderate who has and does not have experience
in a game, staff will no longer forcefully redraw any game due to differences in experience. As always,
players can still agree to redraw if their experience levels are notably different and they both seek a
fair and competitive match.

Emulator Issues
Similarly, due to how situational most emulator and rom-related bugs, crashes,
and errors are, we cannot moderate these occurrences consistently and fairly. Thus, compensation will
not be provided if any of these occur midrace. The provided emulator bundle should greatly help in
avoiding these occurrences. As before, if players have issues getting games to work prior to the beginning
of the race, a redraw will likely take place. This new approach may not apply to freeware games which will
ultimately be up to staff's discretion.

Congratulations usedpizza!

After 37 days of exciting matches, the new mystery tournament champion has finally be determined: usedpizza!
We burned through a total of 287 submitted games over the course of the tournament, which came to an end during
the top 8 showdown last saturday. In case you missed the finals, you can watch the
stream or head
over to the bracket for the full results.

Over the next few weeks we will revisit a top selection of this tourney's games with a daily mystery match at 6pm EST,
starting tomorrow. Visit #blind to not miss out on this chance to play a lot of great games!

Last but not least, we want to thank all entrants for their participation and their submitted games. We hope you had lots of fun and to see you all again early in the new year for MT6!

Your #mystery Team, September 17th 2014

MT5 finals coming up

We are mere days away from finding out who our champion of Mystery Tournament 5 is!
Tune in this Saturday, Sept. 13th at 1pm EST / 5pm GMT to watch the final matches unfold.
We'll start with the top 8 participants, and stream each individual match until the winner is decided.

The confirmed qualified players so far are FullaLizards, usedpizza, Jorf, Knighty, AND4H and the defending
champion from last tournament, Capndrake.

MT5 is now LIVE!

Mystery Tournament #5 is now officially underway with a final number of 138 participants.
Go visit #mystery to get your matches in or join all the other races!

Here are the results of the availability form to help you contact your
opponent:
Availability list

Good luck & have fun - August 8th, 2014

Availability Form

The availability form is now public:
To the form!
If you're participating in the tournament, you are required to fill this out
by August 5th. It should not take you more than 3 minutes to complete! The data we collect from this will make
scheduling matches with your opponents significantly less difficult. Due to its importance, we will be using
this form as our "check-in" for the tournament. Remember,
much like your game submissions, if you don't fill out this brief form,
you will not be able to participate!
July 25th, 2014

Mystery Tournament #5 Updates and Reminders

Our registration period is coming to a close, but we still have time to top our entrant count of 151 from last tournament --
we're already at 140 entrants with over two weeks to go!

Reminder that the deadline for registration and game submissions is at 11:59pm EST on Friday, August 1st.
If you don't register on our Challonge page
and submit your 3-4 required games by this time, you will
not be able to participate! If you prefer, you are free to register well before you get your submissions in.
While you don't need to submit your games at the same time, we encourage you to finish them up well before the
deadline in case there are any issues with your goals that need to be cleared up. Additionally, our tournament's
game testers would greatly appreciate not having a flood of 100+ submissions pouring in on the last day. In
addition to these submissions, you will be required to fill out an availability form that will be provided no
later than the 1st. You must also complete this form before the tournament begins to participate!

A tournament schedule has been provided on our website's
Schedule tab.
Important dates to remember are:

August 1st: registration, submission deadlines

August 8th: tournament begins

September 13th: top 8 matches

As always, please join us in #mystery on the SpeedRunsLive IRC when you can, as you will need to be in this channel
often throughout the tournament. If you have any questions pertaining to game submissions, deadlines, the tournament
itself, or whatever else, we'll be happy to clear things up there. We hope to see you around and look forward to the
biggest, craziest mystery tournament yet.

July 17th, 2014

Mystery Tournament #5 registration has now started!

Registration for the fifth SpeedRunsLive mystery tournament is now officially open!
After a record-setting 151 entrants in the fourth installment of our mystery tournament,
we are aiming to gather even more entrants this time around. Before joining,
it is necessary that you read all information provided in our site's sidebar,
especially if you are new to our tournaments and don't want to miss out on all the fun.
Although you will have until early August to sign up and submit your required games,
we strongly encourage you to start thinking about your submissions as soon as possible.
Additionally, at any time in the final seven days leading up to the tournament's commencement,
you will be required to fill out a brief availability form that will be provided later on.
Please do not forget!

You can register for the tournament on its Challonge page here:
Sign-up!

The current brackets shown are just a preview and will be shuffled before the tournament begins.
A schedule will also be provided in the coming weeks; the deadlines for each round will be
displayed within the brackets, so you will always know when your matches are due.

June 13th, 2014

Mystery Tourney Website is now live!

Because previous mystery tournaments have required participants to visit several different links to locate all necessary information,
we have decided to gather everything in a single, centralized place for all future tournaments.
This also gives us the capability to provide news surrounding future events, announcements and results.Your #mystery Team, June 2014

Playing in the Tournament

Scheduling Your Match

Once brackets are generated after registration closes, we recommend seeing who your opponent is and contacting them as soon as possible to schedule your first match. Each match will generally take between 20 and 45 minutes to complete, but between the players’ skill and the goal’s difficulty, this time frame is not a guarantee. Additionally, there's time taken to set up the race and the game - please try to have at least an hour free for the entire race.

You will have at least 3 days per round to play each match. A spreadsheet with contact information will be provided. If you're having trouble contacting your opponent or you are not able to meet up during a round's duration, please let us know as soon as possible. Asynchronous races, where each player plays the same goal when they have availability and the final times are compared, are possible as a last resort.

The tournament schedule will be shown on the round labels in the brackets. While each round will have a deadline, if players finish their matches early and have their opponent determined, they are free to play ahead of schedule if they choose to do so.

Starting The Race

When you and your opponent are both ready to race and you are both in #mystery, one of you must type "GIVEGAME" in the channel; this tells us that you are both ready to go. Following this, an admin will create a race channel for you both to join. Once you have both joined the channel and entered the race with the .enter command, the admin will draw any game that wasn't submitted by you or your opponent and announce the console of the game that has been pulled. You can then set your stream up, open the appropriate emulator, capture the emulator with your streaming software, and go live. Locally recording is also strongly recommended to prevent complications that may arise from technical issues.

When both players' streams are up and are displaying the appropriate emulator, the game, goal, download link, and informational Pastebin will be provided. After setting the game up and reading the given information, and confirming that a moderator can see the game properly on your stream, type .ready to indicate that you are ready to begin. Once both players have typed this command, a countdown will begin. You may start playing when the countdown says "GO!".

Though races in Mystery Tournament are intended to be blind - that is, with neither player having prior experience - it is impossible to verify this and unfair to punish competitors for having a wider array of game experience, and no games will be forcefully redrawn for a match. Still, to allow players to experience new games and have fun races, if you are familiar with a game revealed for your match, it is considered good form to tell your opponent and moderator, and if both players agree there may be an advantage, they can request a new game be given.

Racing the Game

During the race you must not view your opponent's stream or rebroadcasts at any time, and must hide your stream chat if a viewer attempts to assist you, as player assistance is a massive advantage and is not allowed. Additionally, with the exception of the Pastebin provided with the goal, you must not use any other sources of assistance, such as walkthroughs. If at all possible, keep the IRC channel for the race visible - if any issues arise or the moderator needs to inform you of anything, that will be the method used.

Due to how situational most bugs, crashes, and errors are, we cannot moderate these occurrences consistently and fairly. If anything happens during your race, please notify the moderator in the IRC race channel, and work quickly to resolve it. Depending on the severity and cause of the occurence, the race may be nullified and redrawn, your final time may be adjusted after the fact to compensate for time lost fixing the problem and regaining progress, or there may even be no changes made to the race.

Determining the Result

When you have completed the goal and reached the point described by the pastebin, type .done in the IRC race channel. Your time will be recorded, and if you completed the goal before your opponent (barring any retimes due to technical problems), you will advance to to the next round of the tournament. If you lose, you will be moved into the loser's bracket, or eliminated if you were already there. If you have a next opponent, try get in touch with them and schedule your next match ASAP. If you don't, keep in mind, anyone is always welcome to join every race they have time for, so set GIVEGAME as a highlight and stick around to keep playing games!

Though all goals are intended to be completed in under 45 minutes, differences in player skill, adaptation to game mechanics, and other unexpected factors can lead to races running much longer. Unlike prior Mystery Tournaments, there will be a hard cutoff for the results of the match at the one hour (60 minute) mark. Whichever player has clearly made the most progress towards completing the goal (at any point of the race: lost progress is not counted against you) will be awarded the victory. In the cases where both players have reached the same point, whoever reached that point earlier in the race will win. If this still does not produce clear results, any further tiebreakers will be at the moderator's discretion.

If both players complete the goal in 15 minutes or less, the race will be nullified and a redraw will occur unless both players agree that the race should determine the result of their match.

Top 8

Unlike the rest of the matches which happen when the players schedule them, Mystery Tournament Top 8 is a full weekend event and is rebroadcast on the GamesDoneQuick twitch channel. Players who qualify are expected to be around for the full duration - if you start getting close and won't be available, please let an organizer know as soon as possible to see what we can do about the situation.

The top 4 will all be best of 3 matches, with a new game drawn for each round. Grand finals will not follow the traditional double elimination structure; while the loser going into grand finals would traditionally be required to win two matches and the winner would be required to win only one, both remaining participants will only play one best of 5 match, regardless of the outcome. The winner going into grand finals will automatically have a one-game lead, meaning he/she must only win twice while the loser must win three times to win the tournament.

Game submission rules and guidelines

Please read before submitting your games!

You must submit a minimum of 2 games.

Each game must be submitted in a separate form.
Roms for the following consoles are blanket allowed: NES, SNES, GB, GBA, Genesis, SMS, Game Gear.
If you want to submit a game for an unlisted console, create a .zip file containing a rom, a properly configured emulator and any necessary instructions.
If permitted to do this, you will be required to create a .zip file containing a rom, a
properly configured emulator, and any necessary instructions to prevent confusion.
Download sizes over 250MB are allowed, but require to be noted as such on the submission form.
Free*, standalone, non-Flash games with low CPU requirements are also allowed.
If you have concerns about whether something is acceptable or not, please discuss it with a Tester. All rules are somewhat negotiable, in service of having fun, interesting, competetive races. (Testers are %half-ops on the #mystery IRC or users with the Tester role on Discord.)
If the game cannot run in windowed mode easily or run well on a computer that isn't a toaster,
discuss it with a Tester before submitting. Please also make sure you are able to properly capture the game with your streaming software of choice.

*free = released for free at some point by the developer / a distributor or is no longer purchasable from the developer -- this applies to all PC submissions

Goals should ideally take between 20 and 45 minutes for someone who has never played the game before.
Because time estimates can be difficult, 25-30 minutes is an ideal time to aim for. If it takes you over
45 minutes to complete your own goal (regardless of how well you think you did), avoid submitting it altogether.

Please playtest all roms with the appropriate emulators found in the bundle provided under the resources tab.

A game may be rejected for simply being too awful. The testers will keep
their standards reasonably low, but this decision is ultimately theirs.

If you intend for the players to complete only a specific portion of the game that is accessible
through an in-game level select feature, be unambiguous with your goal. For instance, if your goal is
"beat level 3 only," the players will only play that single level. If your goal is "beat level 3,"
the players will play through levels 1, 2, and 3.

Play through your goal at least once. There is no better way to ensure a reasonable goal than to play
through it yourself. If you have a lot of experience with a game, try your best to judge how new players would perform.
If you really have no clue, just pick another game - there are plenty out there!

Do not share your ideas with others. Even if you're just aimlessly brainstorming,
telling others what games might show up in the tournament defeats the purpose. No conspiring! Knowing even
a single game in the tournament ruins some of the surprise.

You are required to submit a Pastebin for each submission. Each Pastebin must address the following:

Starting point (i.e. what screen to start the race on)

Ending point (i.e. where to type .done)

Continue system (if applicable - how many lives and continues the player has.
Explaining where the player spawns after a continue is used is heavily encouraged, although not required)

Change in settings and difficulty (if any - default will be assumed and used if unspecified)

Make sure to set the paste exposure to "unlisted", when submitting.

If you are submitting a game that is not in english, you are required to tell
the participants exactly where to start when the race begins, how to get there, what settings to change,
and any other important details.

You should add clarifications about...

unclear mechanics/controls, such as an unlikely combination of inputs (e.g. using sub-weapons in Castlevania)

unclear main objective of the game (what the player is trying to accomplish)

unclear directions, e.g. in a hub or overworld (point them in the right direction rather than forcing them to rely on their intuition)

anything that could confuse the players unintentionally

However, avoid writing an essay or posting an entire FAQ for your Pastebin.
The longer it is, the less likely players will be able to remember the information.
Additionally, please unlist your Pastebin, so no one happens to bump into them.

All games in the following spreadsheet are indefinitely
banned from all SRL mystery tournaments.Banned games
If you have a potential submission, simply Ctrl+F to make
sure your game isn’t listed.

Extremely non-linear games (e.g. top-down adventures and most Metroidvanias)
are banned due to how unpredictable the finishing times will be.

Games that are entirely auto-scrollers (i.e. most shmups) are banned.

Traditional RPGs are banned. Games like Secret of Mana or Beyond Oasis are potentially acceptable in this regard
(but probably still bad), while games like Final Fantasy or Pokemon are not.

Most sports, fighting, and beat 'em up submissions will be rejected. If you plan to submit one of these genres,
discuss the game and goal with a Tester before submitting.

Avoid goals that primarily rely on luck. Something like Arkanoid or Super Bomberman
would be acceptable (although not encouraged): Powerup drops are a large factor in these, but they still require
a fair amount of execution. Games like Monopoly in which the player almost solely relies on
dice rolls will not be accepted.

This section covers suggestions, not hard rules; you are free to ignore them.
These tips are what we have learned from the previous mystery tournaments.

Don't submit games you think are really bad. No one wants to
play them and they'll be rejected anyway.

Avoid submitting popular games. The appeal of a mystery tournament is having two
players race a game they've never touched or one they have equivalent experience in. If you are willing to
put some effort into playing obscure games, chances are you will find a great goal that many are unfamiliar
with in a short amount of time. If you are set on submitting a popular game, try coming up with an innovative
goal that may be “blind” even for those who have played before. For instance, instead of submitting "Super Mario
Bros. 3 - beat world 3 warpless," consider "beat world 2 warpless (pacifism)," meaning players cannot harm
any enemies (excluding bosses).

Below are examples of flawed goals from the previous tournaments, each with their own issues.
Reading these may give you a better idea of what to look out for while finding submissions:

Mega Man Zero 3 - beat intro + any two mavericks
While this goal seems harmless, it’s a nightmare for those unfamiliar with the Mega Man
franchise. If you're testing a game, it's your first time playing, and your time seems safe -
consider your previous experience with the franchise. You may have an advantage and not even realize
it just because you're familiar with the general mechanics of the series.
The other problem with this goal is its open-endedness.
If they are picking any two levels from a selection of eight, one player is almost guaranteed
to have an advantage by chance. In a sense, this goal is extremely non-linear. This goal would
have been more appropriate had the mavericks been specified (along with the order to fight them in).

Ghouls 'n Ghosts - beat level 4
Way too hard. Submit reasonable goals that can be done in reasonable time by an average gamer.

Hover! - beat stage 6
A little luck can be exciting in a blind race, but not if it’s the primary determinant of the
outcome. This game is essentially "hope flags happen to spawn behind you on an open-world map
so you can take them to the goal quickly." Outside of learning how to maneuver your vehicle properly,
this game required very little skill. Submitting a freeware PC game from the 90's was creative, but when
it came to actual gameplay Hover was too silly for a tournament setting.

IRC channel

Mystery tournaments utilize the SpeedRunsLive IRC server for matches and general discussion.
You must join the #mystery and #speedrunslive channels in order to participate.
This Mibbit widget will automatically connect to the needed channels, but we strongly encourage
downloading an IRC client instead (Setup videos: mIRC
and HexChat).

#mystery is where mystery tournament discussion takes place.
You will initiate your matches in this channel and a mod will assist with further setup.

#speedrunslive is where races are created by use of the irc bot RaceBot. Matches will take place in race channels which are
created by RaceBot when prompted. If you are not in #speedrunslive, you will be unable to join race channels and the server will claim you are banned.

You must always use the same nickname in all of these channels. Please commit to a name prior to doing your first race.
If you try to log in with a different nickname, the server will claim you are banned.

IRC information:

New York — irc.speedrunslive.comAmsterdam — irc2.speedrunslive.com

Emulators

Please use the appropriate emulators in
this bundle
while testing your submissions and playing your matches in the tournament.
Although you are free to use alternate emulators if you strongly desire, the roms
you will be playing have only been tested and proven to work with the emulators supplied.

Useful Tools

Some useful tools. Apart from streaming software, these will not be required for the tournament, but they may provide
some quality-of-life improvements when playing lots of different games on a daily basis.